Abstract
In this paper, I argue that within Kantianism, widespread indifference of the global rich to the suffering of the global poor should be understood as resulting at least partly from vice. Kant had much more to say about vice than is often recognized, and it forms a crucial part of his moral anthropology. Kantians should thus attend to the ways in which vice functions as a practical obstacle to fulfilling duties of beneficence. In vice-fueled indifference, inclinations associated with self-love and self-conceit work their way into our wills, interfering with our moral commitments by impeding our ability to recognize moral requirements and our motivation to act on them. Vice distorts our reasoning in ways that promote self-deception and rationalization about the extent to which we are fulfilling moral demands. Kantian vice also has social dimensions. I argue that widespread indifference exacerbates our individual vices through social norms and practices that legitimize ignoring the needs of others. I conclude by offering some potential remedies to indifference within the Kantian framework.
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Notes
Doctrine of Virtue, 405. This and all future references to Kant’s works will employ the Prussian Academy pagination.
For another account of indifference, see Lillehammer, “The Nature and Ethics of Indifference”.
For instance, we might describe the person with the Kantian vice of servility as indifferent to their own moral standing and its implications.
Peter Singer famously makes this case in “Famine, Affluence, and Morality,” although not in explicitly utilitarian terms.
See, for instance, Herman, “The Scope of Moral Requirement”; Formosa and Sticker, “Kant and the Demandingness of the Virtue of Beneficence”; Pinheiro Walla, “Kant’s Moral Theory and Demandingness”; Moran, “Demandingness, Indebtedness, and Charity: Kant on Imperfect Duties to Others.”.
On the extent and methods of state poverty relief, see Holtman, “Kantian Justice and Poverty Relief” and Allais, “What Properly Belongs to Me.”.
See Hill, “Kant on Imperfect Duty and Supererogation”.
Against Hill, David Cummisky has argued that the duty of beneficence leaves very little space for latitude. See Cummiskey, Kantian Consequentialism for the criticism and Hill, “Meeting Needs and Doing Favors” for a response.
DV 393.
Herman’s main argument is in “Mutual Aid and Respect for Persons” but she expands on it in “The Scope of Moral Requirement”.
[Redacted for review].
On this, see Onora O’Neill, Towards Justice and Virtue, especially Chapter 7.
Obviously people who do not care at all about the fate of others around the world are engaged in a major failure of beneficence. Arguably, they have not adopted the end at all. My interest here is in those of us who have adopted the end in some sense, but who do not act in ways consistent with it.
DV 408.
Grenberg,”What is the Enemy of Virtue?” p. 157.
Critique of Practical Reason, 5:73.
Grenberg, p. 158.
DV 404.
DV 453.
Austen, Sense and Sensibility, p. 13.
Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 398.
Critics of Kant sometimes miss this point, incorrectly assuming that Kant sees the cold-hearted benefactor as a moral paragon of sorts. Kant, however, merely describes him as not the worst product of nature (GW 398).
For more on Kant on social life, see Allan Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought; Sharon Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant; Kate Moran, Community and Progress in Kant's Moral; Philip Rossi, S.J., The Social Authority of Reason (Albany: SUNY Press, 2005).
DV 466.
For an account of moral grandstanding, see Justin Tosi and Brandon Warmke, Grandstanding: The Use and Abuse of Moral Talk.
See Martin Sticker, “When the Reflective Watch-Dog Barks: Conscience and Self-Deception in Kant.”.
On this, see Judith Lichtenberg, Distant Strangers: Ethics, Psychology, and Global Poverty.
DV 453.
See, for instance, Lectures on Ethics 27:419.
Religion 6:94–98.
[Acknowledgments redacted for review].
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Stohr, K. Kant, Vice, and Global Poverty. Ethic Theory Moral Prac 26, 271–286 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10255-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-021-10255-8